Today my order from Taiwan Tea Crafts arrived, after a long delay. I have been excited to try a Yuchi wild mountain black tea for a very long time and now I can! I cannot say I’m disappointed. From the first smell of the dried leaves to the first sip I’m completely blown away. Those little leaf-hoppers are the unsung hero of the hour!
The initial smell is, I kid you not, cinnamon rolls. This tea smells exactly like walking by the cinnamon roll stand in the mall, only better. I opened the package and immediately told my wife “you must smell this, now!” She didn’t, because she was too busy drinking some other tea and didn’t want to ‘ruin that experience’. News-flash, drinking this tea ruins all subsequent tea drinking experiences.
I weighed out 4 grams and poured 240 ml of boiling water over the leaves and immediately, again, the smell hits me from the tea pot, candy apples, cinnamon, unicorn tears, who knows, it is just glorious. Those 4 minutes cannot go by fast enough!
I pour the tea, I’m busy signing into Steepster to get this review ready, my wife tastes it first, her face lights up, “You need to try this now!” The taste is ineffable. So unbelievably good. There is cinnamon, wine, apple, candy, brown sugar, caramel, no bitterness, no astringency, other flavours that I cannot even put my tongue upon.
I will literally move Taiwanese mountains to find a supply of this tea to sell. Nothing comes close, all other teas should just pack up their leaves and go back to tea-island because this tea, hands down, unequivocally, and I say this without compunction, kicks the absolute fucking crap out of every single other tea that I have drank. I’m at the bottom of my cup now, and it is really, really sad because it had to end, and I knew it had to end when I began. My wife is smelling her empty cup because it smells good, make another infusion god-dammit!
I can honestly say that none of this is hyperbole.
Flavors: Apple Candy, Bread, Caramel, Cinnamon, Honey, Red Wine, Sweet
Preparation
Comments
They only harvest this type of tea during a short period in the summer. Supply is limited. We have not been able to locate a supplier who has any yet. We will, like we said in the review move heaven and earth to bring this tea to our customers.
We also have our own selfish reasons. We promise to try our best not to drink our inventory … It’s really that good. They sent us some Taiwanese assam as a sample as well. Actually it wasn’t quite a pure assam. It was a hybrid between an assamica and a wild tea tree. My god was that ever good too, tasted quite similar to a really fabulous ceylon we have a sample of, but it paled in comparison to the wild mountain black tea.
thanks to your review I placed my first order from TTC….this tea was one that made the list, as well as samples of their assams. Looking forward to standing my tastebuds up against your review!
Yes, it is a great tea…we have recently found a supplier, so we may have Wild Mountain black available in the near future. So excited for it!
good….someone’s got to fill the hole that Butiki left behind! (wait…that made it sound like you could become a behind hole…not what i meant.)
Haha, we do plan to attempt to fill some of the hole, as we are huge fans of many of her teas and simply can’t live without some. We’re working on a watermelon white tea currently, with more teas to come! We’ve become slightly obsessed with taiwanese teas, so we will be getting some of those too. We were just throwing around the idea of doing an orange creamsicle type tea today. Any other ideas are welcome :D
I’ve just ordered quite a bit of your vanilla tea (cindy in ramona ca) as one of it’s surprising qualities is that it travels well in a stainless travel mug. I’m super picky about teas and am looking forward to what comes next!
Wow, I think I need to try this.
Yeah, hurry up and start selling it so I can buy it from you. :)
They only harvest this type of tea during a short period in the summer. Supply is limited. We have not been able to locate a supplier who has any yet. We will, like we said in the review move heaven and earth to bring this tea to our customers.
We also have our own selfish reasons. We promise to try our best not to drink our inventory … It’s really that good. They sent us some Taiwanese assam as a sample as well. Actually it wasn’t quite a pure assam. It was a hybrid between an assamica and a wild tea tree. My god was that ever good too, tasted quite similar to a really fabulous ceylon we have a sample of, but it paled in comparison to the wild mountain black tea.
thanks to your review I placed my first order from TTC….this tea was one that made the list, as well as samples of their assams. Looking forward to standing my tastebuds up against your review!
Yes, it is a great tea…we have recently found a supplier, so we may have Wild Mountain black available in the near future. So excited for it!
good….someone’s got to fill the hole that Butiki left behind! (wait…that made it sound like you could become a behind hole…not what i meant.)
Haha, we do plan to attempt to fill some of the hole, as we are huge fans of many of her teas and simply can’t live without some. We’re working on a watermelon white tea currently, with more teas to come! We’ve become slightly obsessed with taiwanese teas, so we will be getting some of those too. We were just throwing around the idea of doing an orange creamsicle type tea today. Any other ideas are welcome :D
Taiwanese teas, yes please!!
Also some sort of nutty maple tea would be very Canadian of you ;)
Canadian indeed…a maple pecan oolong perhaps??? It is already in the works. :D
Excelllennnnnttttt
I’ve just ordered quite a bit of your vanilla tea (cindy in ramona ca) as one of it’s surprising qualities is that it travels well in a stainless travel mug. I’m super picky about teas and am looking forward to what comes next!
Thanks for the order, it should get to you soon! The Not So Vanilla gets really tasty as it cools down too. We’re just comparing some awesome Taiwanese assams today, so we’ll be ordering them soon along with some other teas.